Special Feature: Revisiting the Brotherton Burning Trial

Short, Alan

doi:10.2989/102201107780178186

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…To understand these dynamics long-term, the Brotherton Fire Experiment (1981-1992 and 2015-present; South Africa; Figure 2) at Cathedral Peak in the Maloti-Drakensberg was established as a small-scale mesocosm-type fire experiment using 1-, 2-, 5-, and 12year fire-return interval treatments to complement the larger research catchment-scale fire experiment discussed previously [69][70][71]. The experiment is generally sampled biennially, but occasionally on an ad hoc basis [71][72][73]. In 2004, a multi-disciplinary team of scientists used the fire experiment to convince the management authority of its importance by including a broader suite of biodiversity elements and the potential for climate change research [73].…”

Section: Fire Management and Policy That Optimizes Grassland Biodiversity Resilience And Water Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The experiment is generally sampled biennially, but occasionally on an ad hoc basis [71][72][73]. In 2004, a multi-disciplinary team of scientists used the fire experiment to convince the management authority of its importance by including a broader suite of biodiversity elements and the potential for climate change research [73]. The original aim was to assess the effects of pyrodiversity (varied fire frequency and seasonality treatments) on mesic montane grass structure (basal cover) and composition (diversity) [72], but has been expanded to test the effects of fire on forb species composition and diversity [66], soil properties and landscape functioning [74], invertebrate diversity and abundance [75], and multi-decadal changes in grass and forb species composition in concert [69,70].…”

Section: Fire Management and Policy That Optimizes Grassland Biodiversity Resilience And Water Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Carbutt

Thompson

2021

Land

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Southern Africa is an exceptionally diverse region with an ancient geologic and climatic history. Its mountains are located in the southern hemisphere mid-latitudes at a tropical–temperate interface, offering a rare opportunity to contextualise and frame our research from an austral perspective so as to balance the global narrative around sustainable mountain futures for people and biodiversity. Limited Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) was initiated more than a century ago in South Africa to optimise catchment management through sound water policy. The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) has resurrected many government LTER programmes and added observatories representative of the country’s heterogeneous zonobiomes, including its mountain regions. LTER in other southern African mountains is largely absent. The current rollout of the Expanded Freshwater and Terrestrial Environmental Observation Network (EFTEON) and the Southern African chapters of international programmes such as the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA), RangeX, and the Global Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), as well as the expansion of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN), is ushering in a renaissance period of global change research in the region, which takes greater cognisance of its social context. This diversity of initiatives will generate a more robust knowledge base from which to draw conclusions about how to better safeguard the well-being of people and biodiversity in the region and to balance livelihoods and environmental sustainability in our complex, third-world socio-ecological mountain systems.

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Section: Fire Management and Policy That Optimizes Grassland Biodiversity Resilience And Water Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fire Management and Policy That Optimizes Grassland Biodiversity Resilience And Water Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Carbutt

Thompson

2021

Land

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“…Eleven of the original replicated burning treatments have been largely maintained for almost forty years. Interim analyses of the treatment effects on grass (Morris et al 1999;Short 2001Short , 2004 and forb species composition and diversity (Uys et al 2004), soil properties and landscape functioning (Manson et al 2007), and invertebrate richness and abundance (Uys and Hamer 2007) have been undertaken (Short 2007), but multidecadal changes in grass and forb species composition in the BBT have not been assessed.…”

Section: Frequent Burning Maintained a Stable Grassland Over Four Decmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequent burning maintained a stable grassland over four decades in the Drakensberg, South Africa

Morris

Everson

et al. 2020

African Journal of Range & Forage Science

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The mesic temperate montane grasslands of the Drakensberg, located within the broader Drakensberg Alpine Centre in southern Africa (Carbutt and Edwards 2003), are productive and ancient (Ellery and Mentis 1992; Bredenkamp et al. 2002; Bond and Parr 2010). Covering more than 42 000 km 2 of the upland area in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), with only >2 500 km 2 in formal protected areas (Carbutt et al 2011), these closed-canopy grasslands were shaped by conditions during the late Miocene, which facilitated the spread of grassland dominated by C 4 grasses that benefitted from increasing aridity, low atmospheric CO 2 concentrations, and recurrent natural fires (Manry and Knight 1986; Meadows and Linder 1993; Keeley and Rundel 2005; Scheiter et al. 2012). Fire has played an important role in the evolutionary development of the structure and floristic composition of the Drakensberg grassland, with constituent productive grasses that promote fire (Bond et al. 2003) and a diverse assemblage of endemic resprouting forbs with underground bud banks and energy storage units that allow them to withstand frequent burns (Uys 2006; Bond 2016). Fires also maintain the Drakensberg grassland largely free of trees, except for scattered protea species and woody plants in refugia (Adie et al. 2017). A pronounced dry winter together with slow decomposition rates of sourveld grass leaves, result in high loads of cured above-ground biomass (Everson et al. 1988a), which fuel the fires that remove accumulated moribund foliage and litter, allowing sufficient light to reach the soil surface to sustain basal-tillering caespitose grasses (Everson et al. 1985; Everson et al. 1988b; Bond et al. 2003; Neumann et al. 2014) and initiate spring flowering in numerous obligate fire-stimulated grassland forbs (Lamont and Downes 2011). Together, the afore-mentioned appear to indicate a fire regime naturally occurring outside the main growing season of montane grassland plants, but at a time when swards are most susceptible to fire. The frequency and seasonal timing of historical fire regimes in the Drakensberg is unknown and likely variable (Gordijn et al. 2018). Before San hunter-gatherers employed fire to attract wildlife after they settled in the Drakensberg approximately 8 000 to 5 000 BP (Hall 1984; Mazel 1989), lightning was the main natural source of ignition in the

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Fire and montane vegetation dynamics through successive phases of human occupation in the northern Drakensberg, South Africa

Finch

Hill

Meadows

et al. 2022

Quaternary International

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Special Feature: Revisiting the Brotherton Burning Trial

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Frequent burning maintained a stable grassland over four decades in the Drakensberg, South Africa

Fire and montane vegetation dynamics through successive phases of human occupation in the northern Drakensberg, South Africa

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